A California Ranch House for the Stars of Gone With the Wind and Nothing Sacred

Few celebrities exemplified the movie community’s shift to simpler lifestyles better than Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who moved to a 20-acre ranch in the sparsely settled San Fernando Valley town of Encino several months after their marriage in 1939.

The walkway leading up to the Gable and Lombard ranch house.

The couple enjoyed the rural life at the ranch—Gable driving his tractor and Lombard gathering eggs in the henhouse. The property also contained acres of citrus groves, fields of oats and alfalfa, stables, a cow barn and a pigless pigsty.

Color postcard of the Gable and Lombard ranch house.

I’ve always wanted a place like this," Gable told Lombard. “It will be the first home I’ve had...that I can really call my own. Ma, I think we’re going to be very happy here.”